Euskal Oiloa Chicken Forum

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sexing chicks by ipf

Hi there , ipf posted a great bunch of info on sexing chicks on WCPS. I wonder if that would be good info for this site? If so maybe it could be posted here too. What do you think ipf/SLF? Maybe the EOs don't sex this way maybe I should drink more coffee before posting ....

XOX Monika

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2011-09-12 15:07:13

Re: sexing chicks by ipf

If IPF would love to post it here, that would be wonderful, It is likely they aren't feather sexable as it seems a lot of the non-sexable breeds are Spanish. Not a certainty, by any means. I have been finding the tails on all seem to grow around the same rate unlike, say the d'uccles. I have a feeling the sexing may come from subtle head markings, like other barred birds. But I could be wrong, depends if the EO Cantabrian barring gene acts the same as the Regular The black penedesencas you can tell from the comb from day one! But the EOs comb is just a bit slower-about 2 weeks slower.

Re: sexing chicks by ipf

Here it is, with a para added for this specific breed. . .

Feather-sexing works for some pure breeds; for some specific hybrids (see bottom of this post) it also works. However if we're talking about whatever happened to hatch from a mixed flock, you can't generally predict sex from feathering speed in mixed (not purebred) matings.

In EOs, I doubt very much that the K allele is present. It was deliberately bred into other breeds, to enable sight-sexing I believe. There are however some deleterious effects of this allele, I think, but I don't have time to research it right now (I'm off to Alberta in 5 minutes).

Marradunas "should" be sight-sexable, based on barring, since that is also a sex-linked gene. Males have two copies of the barred allele (B/B), and females, only one (B/b), so the males should have brighter barring, and show with a bigger headspot when young, than the females. At least, that's the theory. What do you folks in the real world see?....................................Feathering speed is governed by a sex-linked gene, K=slow, and k+ (wildtype) = fast. (two other, even slower, variants exist. I won't go into them right now).

Breeds that have the K allele (and since we're talking breeds, not hybrids, they ONLY have the K allele) will feather slowly, in general. Becasue it's sex-linked, males have two copies (K/K) and females only one (K/-). Because of the dosage effect, males (with two doses) will feather slower than females.

Breeds that have the K allele, so should be feather sexable, are:BrahmaCochinLangshanDorkingCornishSussexOrpingtonAustralorpRIRNew HampshireBarred RockWyandotteDelawareJersey Giant

Breeds that have the k+ allele, so won't be feather sexable:LeghornMinorcaAndalusianAnconaBuff CatalanaBrabanterCampine

It gets even more interesting with hybrids. If you cross a female from the slow-feathering list (K allele, so K/-) with a male from the fast feathering list (k+ allele, so k+/k+), all the cockerels (K/k+) will feather slowly, and the pullets (k+/-) will feather REALLY fast.